Register now to Crestfall Gaming. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to contribute to this site by submitting your own content or replying to existing content. You'll be able to customize your profile, receive reputation points as a reward for submitting content, while also communicating with other members via your own private inbox, plus much more! This message will be removed once you have signed in.

Project Update - July 17th, 2016

As you may have noticed, it's been a bit slow on the development posts. At this time of the year, Rodeg and I were both extremely busy. I have deadlines at work, and he was finishing up his school year. Therefore, the past month has been a bit sluggish, and that's being nice about it. Due to this, I felt it would be best I made sure everyone know where we are at, development wise.

As I've said in the past, the biggest thing was fixing clustering related issues, and finishing system rewrites. Once we have these types of things finished, we would like to get a real test going. The problem with this, is that these things are a bit hard to judge. For example, while working on loot from core side, we realized we'll have to adjust some tables in the database for more accurate results. So this is resulted in Darkrasp having to tweak his already finished work. This is one of the things that can occur. It takes us longer, but it's better for the players in the long run. When it comes to Mail, it's difficult because as I've said previously, it has to check with worldserver to ensure a player has items, money, etc. What I need to do is ensure that no issues occur in situations like this, so I'm constantly relooking at the situation the best route to take. Auctions require the same tweaking. When it comes to channels, we have to make sure we avoid annoying issues with notifications, with messages always showing up, filtering messages/spam, etc. So this can take time to test from a developer perspective, unless you want heavy spam in chat channels.

So, where are we exactly as a project? Most of loot is done on my side. I still have yet to commit because I'm testing now that I received a few thousand creatures from Darkrasp(Database wise), so now I'm doing more tests to find any issues that can occur between our work. As for Channels, Rodeg has it basically done. There's some stuff he has to clean up and tweak, and then I'll do one good review of the code. What's great about this is Rodeg was actually new to C++ a few months ago, but he's progressed greatly as he's really put in a lot of effort. The first few commits he did, by the time I reviewed them, he had already put in commits fixing most of the issues. I wanted him to take the channel system because it's nowhere near as complex as mail or loot may be, but it's enough to give him a real challenge, and he's been doing fantastic with it. As for auctions, they've been started, but due to my time decrease via work, it's only a basic system so far.

I'm sure by now, you're wondering: Where does that leave the project? Honestly, I still don't believe it looks too bad. Obviously, we're moving a bit slower than we were a month ago, but we're hoping to fix that again. I will be pushing to finish both loot and mail this week(I have off Weds-Fri from work), so hopefully that goes as planned. Once Mail is 100%, Auctions shouldn't take me too long to handle, so hopefully, even with all the delays, my plans for finishing the initial work by August is still viable (Except for loot database, as it will take time for Darkrasp to completely. Remember, he's rebuilding ALL loot from scratch).

The big question is, how do we look for 2016? I personally feel it's very achievable. We may not be able to launch a flawless state, because no one ever can, but I'm feeling very confident. Even if we delay a test round (at least open testing) till September, to allow us to finish cleaning all major issues after finishing systems, we would have 6 - 7 people working on scripting. With around 250 actual quests needing scripts, Many scripts can be done in hours. For example, our Eastern Kingdoms file with notes on quests requiring scripts. 302 lines long total. Quest 5944 - In Dreams, has like 6 - 7 sentences of notes. Then you look at Quest 3441 - Divine Retribution, which only has 1 sentence with information about clicking through gossip to recieve credit. One could take a day, one could take 30 minutes of sql input. In most cases, they take a few hours at best.

As for instance/raid content, most bosses and trash are easy. For example, EVERYTHING up to BRD is easy to script. Even then, most bosses don't require anything special. BRD is a good example of this actually. Most bosses aren't mechanical heavy in a scripting sense. Sure, Ring needs to be scripted, Few things like Thaurissan aggroing everything in his room on combat start, but overall scripting is not very difficult. Our engine was built on our Cataclysm branch, so it supports quite a bit more than Vanilla needs, and adjustments are easy to make for Rodeg or I.

Overall, I'm still rather content with where we are, even with the slowdowns. I am truly happy that we decided to take our time like this and really do things right. I would also like to say we appreciate all of those who are still here constantly checking the status, talking on our forums. It keeps us going knowing people want the same thing our team does. I will be scheduling a Q&A period sometime in the upcoming weeks once we have an idea of when everyone can be available from the team, that way everyone can get a chance to ask their questions.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I'm not trying to be pushy in any form, but when will this project open? I've been watching a lot of videos about nost and I'm disappointed I missed the opportunity to be apart of another strong, loving community again. I literally stopped taking retail WoW seriously and haven't played it since the beta of cata came out because of how shitty of the road I foresaw the game was going to go towards to. Recently I've been playing the RetroWoW private server and I somewhat enjoy the pvp, but it's not cutting it. Anyway, I'm not trying to find another "nostalrius" but just play a good game with a good community. If this project isn't going to be open for some time, is there any good blizzlike recommended servers? I truly do miss getting excited over green/blue items and the lore-filled quest lines.

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I'm not trying to be pushy in any form, but when will this project open? I've been watching a lot of videos about nost and I'm disappointed I missed the opportunity to be apart of another strong, loving community again. I literally stopped taking retail WoW seriously and haven't played it since the beta of cata came out because of how shitty of the road I foresaw the game was going to go towards to. Recently I've been playing the RetroWoW private server and I somewhat enjoy the pvp, but it's not cutting it. Anyway, I'm not trying to find another "nostalrius" but just play a good game with a good community. If this project isn't going to be open for some time, is there any good blizzlike recommended servers? I truly do miss getting excited over green/blue items and the lore-filled quest lines.

Hopefully 2016 sometime. But realistically, if I had to guess, like Q1 2017.

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

We intend to have our open beta by the end of the summer. Full release will depend on how the beta goes and how long it takes to fix all the problems we find. We aren't going to launch a badly broken server.

5

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

We intend to have our open beta by the end of the summer. Full release will depend on how the beta goes and how long it takes to fix all the problems we find. We aren't going to launch a badly broken server.

Well that's good news. OBT by the end of summer is faster than I honestly anticipated.

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

We intend to have our open beta by the end of the summer. Full release will depend on how the beta goes and how long it takes to fix all the problems we find. We aren't going to launch a badly broken server.

Nice!!! Thanks for the update

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Will there be restrictions on this? Like are there priorities where you would fix some stuff later on? Are there things that must be fixed before launch? You could make a list of categories which you would like to have tested so people can aim for it and know that some little things dont have high priorities. That would help not wasting peoeples time.

I would like to enjoy Dungeons, when people say they enjoy Dungeons, i dont get it. Some dungeons miss NPC Abilities, some NPC's cast an Ability only ones until death, some Ability does to much or to less damage, Patrols are not working or not correctly set waypoints. One part of the Challenges in Dungeons was to accidently pull to much by not coordinating patrols. (You know when patrols cross each other and than back to their path.) Also do some patrols stay a little bit before they start walking again on a patrol path?

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Well, we need all player spells, abilities and talents to be working properly. That's a given.

Dungeons and quest scripts need to be implemented and working in a non-exploitable fashion.

Major core mechanics need to be functioning and tested thoroughly under load to ensure they can't be broken.

Anti-cheat and anti-hack mechanisms also need to be strenuously tested.

There really isn't any reason to launch with things not working, provided we know about the problems. I suppose if there's something that doesn't come up in testing, then we might launch with that still broken, but I'd rather take an extra two weeks and fix all the little bugs rather than launch with them and just say "oh well, they aren't that important."

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Well, we need all player spells, abilities and talents to be working properly. That's a given.

Dungeons and quest scripts need to be implemented and working in a non-exploitable fashion.

Major core mechanics need to be functioning and tested thoroughly under load to ensure they can't be broken.

Anti-cheat and anti-hack mechanisms also need to be strenuously tested.

There really isn't any reason to launch with things not working, provided we know about the problems. I suppose if there's something that doesn't come up in testing, then we might launch with that still broken, but I'd rather take an extra two weeks and fix all the little bugs rather than launch with them and just say "oh well, they aren't that important."

Is there somewhere a table to see how far progress is going and what is still under construction?

0

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I wish there was, but not yet. I know Asura is putting a big update on the Alpha realm in a couple days that is going to start testing a big chunk of the remaining new core systems. While we're still working on the core, it's tough to give timeline estimates of anything.

I'll work on putting something together for my next update that will show what's left to do before launch.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Oh I wasn't expecting an ETA. More like a table showing how far you've come (percentages? Maybe per area? whatever information gives an estimate on how far you've come)

a nice suggestion to give to Asura during the community FAQ coming up this week.

I agree with this as to help give the public an idea of where we are at in terms of testing.

maybe a silly bar graph or something with major core systems/dungeons/spells/raids/quests with their own little sub categories. I'll see if I can get someone in alpha chat to draw up a nice outline for Asura if he wants something like this